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storyteller,
who asked for Beauty in the Little Things, Hope, and Pettiness. Uh, I
tried to give you all three so you might possibly hate the result. Erk.
K “You’re lucky the Ministry let you live, let alone let you off with such a light sentence,” Harry seethed. “And you have the gall, the contempt to sue them?” Malfoy’s face was calm, and Harry fought against the urge to spit in it. “I knew this about you, Malfoy,” he said, lowering his voice. “I knew you were dirty, I knew you were petty, but I—”
“If it were your family home they’d raided and nearly destroyed, Potter,” Malfoy interrupted, his voice dry and tired, “you’d call it many things, but I’m guessing none of them would be ’petty.’”
Harry paused at this, thrown by the resignation in Malfoy’s voice. Malfoy leaned forward.
“When you do your final raid,” he said.
“I’m not—” Harry inserted automatically.
“—Shut up. When you do your final raid, there’s an upstairs safe behind the library fireplace. There’s a pine box in it.” Malfoy shrugged his shoulders, a long slow movement that looked half like arrogance and half like defeat. “You might as well keep it.”
“Stuff it, Malfoy,” Harry answered.
But he looked for it anyway.
There was barely anything of value left at the Manor by that point; the Aurors had been over and over the family rooms so often that they’d taken to setting things on fire out of boredom. Inset into the charred and blackened wall of the great fireplace, lurking behind a mound of charred and blackened books, Harry found the safe.
“What’s that, Harry?” Ron asked, peering over his shoulder as Harry opened the pine box. It was delicate, sleek to the touch and elegantly wrought—much, he imagined before he could help himself, like Malfoy himself would be.
Dear Potter, he read in the first line of the first hand-written letter whose edges curled up at him.
He straightened.
“It’s nothing,” he answered quickly. “Nothing at all.”
He touched his wand to the box, turning the letters to ash before the shock in his bones had time to harden into wanting or despair.